Advertising today is a worldwide phenomenon. It is important to recognize that many advertisers use advertisements for many purposes with many different possible effects. For example, within a given country it is common to find what might be considered highly fanciful advertising for consumer goods such as toothpaste, detergents, or soft drinks, and highly technical messages dealing with construction equipment, medical supplies, or computer services. The advertisers themselves can include huge multinational firms, special interest groups, local shopkeepers, and individuals. Their intents can range from altering behavior to affecting the way people think about a particular social or economic position. The results of their efforts can range from enormously influential to a waste of the advertiser’s money. It is not, then, a subject that lends itself to oversimplification.

When you think about “advertising,” you probably think in terms of specific advertisements. To begin there, then, advertisements can be recognized as paid, non-personal communication forms used with persuasive intent by identified sources through various media.

As paid communication forms they are different from common varieties of publicity (e.g., a press release) or “public relations” e.g., a news conference), which are often covered by the media without charge. By non-personal they are distinguished from forms of personal salesmanship occurring in business establishments or door-to-door. The advertiser is identified, which again sets this form of persuasive communication apart from various types of promotion and publicity in the form of “news” or “feature” material often carried by the media, but supplied by a particular source whose intent is often persuasive.

Advertisements are most commonly associated with the mass media of newspapers, magazines, cinema, television, and radio, although they frequently flourish in other forms such as billboards, posters, and direct mail as well. And, finally, advertisements are overwhelmingly used with persuasive intent. That is, the advertisers are striving to alter our behavior and/or levels of awareness, knowledge, attitude, and so on in a manner that would be beneficial to them.

These are some of the most obvious characteristics of advertisements, the end product of much that is advertising.

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